How to Be Dead
by Space Teeth
Summary: In the parallel universe, somebody wants to control the Time Vortex and they will do anything to get that power. Back in his universe, the Doctor is losing his mind after losing everyone he loves. Can two broken people find each other before two universes are ripped apart?
1. Chapter 1

They walked through the quiet old wood hand-in-hand, as they had done across time and universes.

The baby TARDIS waited for them, tucked into the shelter of a dead trunk, virtually invisible next to the bleached wood. If they hadn't been able to hear her low, contented humming in their heads, they would never have known she was there.

Still holding Rose's hand, the Doctor removed a key from his pocket. As he approached the tiny time machine, he held the key out and the lock glowed helpfully in response. Rose watched as he unlocked the door with a soft snick. It opened inward, the light emanating outward heart-wrenchingly familiar. It had been eight years since they'd last seen the inside of a TARDIS.

The Doctor turned to Rose and grinned. She gave him her most brilliant smile in return, tongue firmly tucked in her teeth, and together they entered their TARDIS for the first time.

****

Rose awoke slowly, lying prone on a cold concrete floor. Everything was very quiet and no light filtered through her closed eyelids. She wasn't quite clear on what had happened, but this was hardly the first time she'd witnessed an explosion by being blown from its vicinity. She knew her hearing and sight would come back slowly. She managed to peel one eyelid open and immediately slammed it back shut. The light was minimal, but drifting dust had lodged itself into her eye. Rose blinked furiously, trying to clear the foreign material from under her eyelids. No tears would come to help the process along. She tried to move her arms and legs and couldn't. Fright shot through her to her bones and she took a deep breath, willing herself to relax. Whatever had happened, she wouldn't help matters by panicking. All her years with the Doctor and Torchwood had taught her nothing if not that.

She tried moving each limb individually and could only move one of her arms a few inches. She suspected she must be pinned in debris. She felt incredibly strange, as though she weren't quite in her body. It must be shock, she told herself. Either that or she was more badly injured than she wanted to contemplate.

Well, the rest of the team had been about, anyway; surely they would manage to dig her out shortly. There was nothing to do but wait. The Doctor should be able to find her easily. They had been linked for seven years now, the feeling as familiar as her old blue leather jacket. He had always lamented that the telepathic bond they'd formed wasn't as strong as it might have been with his full Time Lord self, but it had always been strong enough for them to feel each other's presence. She couldn't sense him now, though. That was strange, too. Where could he have got to that made him invisible to her? It had only happened once before in seven years, and she didn't think there were any T'K'Rasi around here to overpower all the other telepaths with their blaring trumpet-like thoughts.

She reached out mentally and found she could sense little Keira, all those miles off outside London with Jackie, which gave her the first sense of relief she'd had. At least her daughter was fine. Her mind was dormant and buzzing lightly with the fizz of sleep. She'd been down here several hours at least then. They'd entered the abandoned factory in the morning. Keira had just awoken when Rose and the Doctor had gotten the emergency call from Torchwood and they'd barely had time to kiss her goodbye before scooting out the door in the darkness before dawn.

Reaching her mind a bit farther, she also sensed the baby TARDIS in the wood beyond her parents' mansion. The time machine's golden glow brightened a bit as it returned her greeting. The TARDIS seemed sad. She hadn't known an entity like the TARDIS could feel emotions like that, but her brain couldn't seem to focus and soon she gave up on the idea.

She felt herself growing foggy as time passed, still without sound or movement or light. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she lost consciousness for the second time.

****

When she woke again, she was handcuffed to a hospital bed. At least her limbs and eyes and ears seemed to be working again. She worked her wrist in the cuff, frowning. Why would they have her handcuffed to the bed? She remembered being injured, lying under rubble, and nothing else. She couldn't imagine what she'd done to deserve suspicion.

As she caught a glimpse of the back of her hand she did a double take. Her fingernails were longer than she remembered and bare of color. Hadn't she been wearing pink nail varnish? Chipped, two-week-old nail varnish, but she was certain it had been there when she left in the morning. How long had she been in the hospital? Where were the Doctor and Keira and her mum? Why was she alone? She was starting to feel frantic, and no one was in sight to answer her questions. It was just her in what she recognized as one of the stark white Torchwood medical suites. A host of the latest medical equipment, some of it courtesy of alien technology, sat dormant off to one side of the room. Obviously she hadn't been badly injured enough to require it.

"Hey," she called. Her voice was so scratchy it was almost unfamiliar. She willed her mouth to produce enough saliva for her to speak clearly.

The one word had evidently been enough, because she heard the staccato squeaks of someone's trainers running across cheap tile. The door to her suite opened and a man in a white coat ducked his head through. "Oh, she's awake," he said to someone she couldn't see.

After a moment she heard more footsteps and her father walked into the room. He looked tired and sad. He wasn't the still-youthful man she'd known when she first arrived in the parallel universe. More than a decade as the head of Torchwood, making all the difficult decisions no one else wanted to make, had left him prematurely aged. Even so, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen that level of fatigue in his eyes.

"Dad," she said immediately. "What's going on? What happened? Why - "

He cut her off, his words abrupt and harsh. "Who are you? What have you done with my daughter?"

Rose blinked. Her brain couldn't quite process what he was asking her. It didn't make any sense. "Dad, it's — I'm me, I'm Rose." Her voice was scratchy and squeaky and her throat ached from disuse.

Pete stared at her coldly for several moments. She wanted to ask him all the questions frantically circling her brain, but she knew that look. She'd seen him give it to enemies on more than one occasion. He was working through things in his mind, and he wouldn't tell her anything until he was ready. Finally he spoke, seeming to choose his words with caution. "The Doctor once told me that as his other self, he could grow a new body to save himself from imminent death. He said it was an ability unique to the Time Lords."

She nodded, feeling a sense of dread deep in her belly. If she'd had anything in her stomach she might have been nauseous. "I saw him do it once. The Doctor you met wasn't the first Doctor I knew." Her voice was starting to annoy her, and she cleared her throat several times.

Her father looked at her for a moment more, then produced a small makeup compact from his pocket. She stared at him in befuddlement. "Take a look in the mirror," Pete suggested.

Rose only glanced into it for a moment before dropping it onto the bed in shock. Slowly, she found it with her free hand and brought it back up.

Looking back at her in the mirror was a different woman. Visibly younger, with long dark hair pulled away from her face with a simple rubber band. Everything had changed, from her skin tone to the shape of her face. Too stunned to speak, she dropped the mirror on the bed again.

"Now you can see why we don't really believe you're Rose Tyler," Pete said quietly.

For once she wished she had the Doctor's gob. He was never speechless. Now she was speechless and helpless both. For a woman who had fearlessly traveled between universes, seeing atrocities and wonders alike, it was an unfamiliar feeling. She hadn't experienced this sense of absolute despair since that horrible day she pounded her fists raw on a blank white wall.

The expression on her face must have spoken volumes, because Pete wasn't giving her that cold stare anymore. "Answer me one question," he said softly. Rose nodded. "What was the first thing you ever said to me, when we met all those years ago?"

Rose closed her eyes, remembering a posh party before it erupted into violence and death. "You said something about mum — no, your Jackie's — twenty-first birthday, and then I remembered I was supposed to be a waiter, and I offered you champagne." When she opened them again, she saw a glimmer of tears in Pete's eyes. She continued, her new, scratchy voice quiet. "And you said you might as well drink it, you were paying for it."

Pete sighed and wiped at his eyes. "I believe you, and I think your mum will too. We ran a test of your DNA while you were unconscious, and it's mostly a match for...well, your previous samples. There are some differences, which we'll discuss later. For now, I think you should see your mum."

He turned to leave, clearly not knowing what to do in this situation any more than Rose did.

"Dad," she whispered. "The Doctor...where is he? I can't feel him. Is he hurt?"

Pete turned back to her, his hands clenched into fists. This was obviously a question he'd been hoping she wouldn't ask. Maybe he thought she already knew. "He's dead, Rose. The people who blew up that warehouse — they abducted him and they shot him. We found his body last night."

****

The hours after she learned of her Doctor's death went by in a feverish blur. One of the Torchwood hospital staff came and released her from the handcuffs. Then they brought her a plate of spag bol, which she put aside without so much as a glance. She didn't know what this new body wanted, but food was not it.

Her mother came, tears running down her cheeks, and threw herself onto Rose's bed to wrap her in a hug. Rose stiffened in her embrace, the feeling of her new body within her mother's arms unfamiliar to her. Jackie backed off quickly, seeming to sense that she needed time to adjust. There was a lot to adjust to, after all. Having a different body, a different face, a different voice, a different personality. Being a widow and a single mum. Losing the only man she'd ever loved — could ever love, if what the Doctor had told her about the Gallifreyan marriage bond was to be believed. She asked her mother if anyone had told Keira what was happening. Her mother shook her head and said, "Love, we didn't know what to tell her."

She felt strangely serene about it all, as if it was all happening to someone else. She supposed in a way it was. Rose Tyler was dead, had died in the explosion used as a cover for the Doctor's kidnapping, and now this new girl was in her place. The Doctor had seemed to adapt to his new body so easily. Then again, by the time she'd borne witness to his regeneration, he'd done it nine times already. Perhaps experience made it easier. Or maybe all his babbling about teeth and hair had been a cover for the emotional upheaval encountered by a soul being transplanted whole into a new brain.

Finally left alone, she thought about Keira. How would her little girl react? It wasn't as if they could have warned her about this happening. No, she didn't want to see Keira yet. She was safe enough with Jackie at the mansion for now.

She got up and went to the loo, using it with a comfortingly familiar sense of relief. One thing stayed the same, at least.

Sighing, she took the opportunity to examine her new face and body in the mirror above the sink. She yanked the rubber band from her hair, wincing as it took several hairs with it. Her new hair wasn't bad at all; long and wavy and chestnut. She didn't think she'd ever feel an urge to bleach this mane. It was much better than the mousy brown mop she'd been born with. Gone was her wide smile, replaced with thinner, narrower lips. Her teeth were much straighter and her nose was more substantial. Her face was longer and oval-shaped. Her skin was a bit darker and more olive, and it occurred to her in a far-off way that she would need new makeup. Her old things would never work with this coloring at all. Her eyes, though, were still the same whiskey-brown they'd always been.

She looked a bit younger as well. Her old body had shown every one of its thirty-two years of living, years of stress at Torchwood and dimension-jumping taking its toll, and now she wondered if she could pass for a student still at university. She didn't think she was more or less attractive than she'd been. Just different.

Abruptly she felt that she had spent enough time critiquing her new appearance. She had the strangest niggling feeling in the back of her mind, that something wasn't done. Something left unfinished, but she had no idea what it might be. She sighed again. Was this body a sigher?

Closing the bathroom door behind her, she saw that a new outfit had been laid out on the bed for her. Bemused, she fingered the soft fabrics, and recognized the mark of her mother's more recent sophisticated style. A simple green blouse and black trousers, nothing fancy. Pulling the hospital smock over her head, she slipped into the new garments. They fit her well, and she realized she was quite a bit taller than she used to be. There were no shoes with the outfit, but a pair of plain slippers lay on the floor next to the bed. She slid them on and walked to the door. Nobody had said she couldn't leave the room.

She wanted to see her husband.

****

It took her a good ten minutes of cajoling, but the technician at the Torchwood morgue finally let her in to see him. She knew better than to try to convince them she was Rose, so she merely repeated the line that she had the Director's permission — not strictly true, perhaps, but he hadn't told her she couldn't - until the stubborn man gave in.

They entered the cold, octagonal morgue room. The silence was total within its chilly walls, the only sound the tapping of their shoes on the plain tile. The technician pulled a drawer out of the wall and nodded to her, closing the door behind him and leaving her alone with her husband.

She approached the drawer slowly, knowing what she was going to see but dreading it all the same. He was inside a bag and she had to unzip it, pulling it down past his face and shoulders.

He was still, so still, unmoving as he had never been in life. It was so wrong to see him this way. A part of her expected him to jump up and give her his cheeky grin, chiding her for ever thinking he could really die.

She looked at him closely. She wanted one last picture of him in her head. His skin was greyish and his hair hung limp across his brow. Unable to leave it there, she smoothed it away, flinching at how cold he was. Much colder even than the Time Lord had been. His beautiful brown eyes were closed.

Jamie Noble looked peaceful, at least. She hated to think that he had died alone and scared. They hadn't closed the bullet wound in his temple yet and it had puckered strangely. Rose looked away from the fatal wound, focusing on the plain white wall next to the exit. She closed her eyes and inhaled a shuddering breath.

She still had to tell Keira that her father was dead. Then she had to decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life alone without the only man she'd ever loved.

Rose traced her hand down the Doctor's face and thought that if she did only one thing, she would find his killers and return the favor. She didn't know if it was her new personality taking shape, and she didn't care. The violence of that thought did not bother her. They would die, and she would be there, she saw it clearly in her mind's eye, as though it had already been accomplished.

She leaned down and laid a final kiss on his stiff lips. Never again would he kiss her back with that beautiful mouth of his, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling as he gave her a fond grin and yanked her into his arms. Never again would he expound on how wonderful human sexuality was, how he felt so much more deeply and fully than he had as a Time Lord. Never again would they leave Keira with Jackie and spend a Saturday afternoon in bed.

Unzipping the bag further, she found his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Goodbye, my Doctor," she told him.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor watched with a feeling of inevitably impending pain as River walked back into her office at the University, clutching his old sonic in her hand. He had added the chip that would save the most important part of her, though he wondered how much she would appreciate being trapped in CAL's fantasy world for the rest of eternity. Knowing her, she probably spent half her time telling little Charlotte bedtime stories and the other half coming up with new ways to debauch the rest of her crew.

The TARDIS hummed gently to him as he walked up the ramp. She too knew what was about to happen, and she mourned the loss of the human who had been born to commune with her. The Doctor touched the console and hung his head. He always lost them. No matter how hard he tried, what he did, how clearly the timelines unfolded in his mind, he always lost them. He remembered River's death vividly even though it had been hundreds of years ago for him. There weren't many memories that stayed so crystal clear after a regeneration, but he had never been able to forget. The electricity shooting through her body as her back arched in pain and he strained to pull his wrists from the handcuffs she'd locked on him. He hadn't even known her then, but he'd felt their marriage bond when she touched his face. He'd known she was telling the truth when she whispered his true name in his ear. He closed his eyes, trying to shake the memory from his mind. He couldn't do anything about it now. It was up to his tenth self to save her essence in the childlike computer.

River, Amy, Rory...he'd destroyed their whole family, hadn't he? The craving for Amy had always been so strong, the closest thing he had to the lost bond with the rest of his people. She had drawn him to her again and again, like an insect attracted to the light, when it would have been best for her to leave her behind. His previous self had been better at that. His ninth self had even managed to send Rose away, not that it had worked. Of course, knowing Amy, she would have taken being sent home about as well as Rose had.

He'd always told himself the balm of her presence in his present would make up for the pain of her loss in his future.

He always lied to himself.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him. River was inside the computer at the Library — couldn't he go visit her? Surely there was a way for him to interface with the enormous computer and access River's essence. It wasn't quite like the Matrix, back before the war, when he could have fully resurrected her, but he should be able to speak with her. If he could get the interface sophisticated enough, maybe she'd even be able to give him the slap he knew he'd have coming for never having told her what would happen the first time they met.

Nevermind the Vashta Nerada. They were nothing but a bunch of insects when it came down to it. Nasty little things, but he was the Lord of Time. His fear of them had always been more for the sake of his companions than for himself.

Determined, he set the coordinates for the Library.

****

The TARDIS wouldn't let him land.

He pounded on the console with his fist, staring at the whirling of the vortex on his monitor. "What? What is it? Why can't we land there?"

As ever, his beautiful machine didn't give a direct response. Wasn't capable of it, really, which was why her time as Idris had been so wonderful for him. Though he had been slightly disturbed by the revelation that she always took him where she believed he needed to be. Was it possible for a TARDIS to have her own agenda? What could a trans-dimensional being with the power to control space-time even want?

He hadn't properly reflected on the incident with House for many years after it had happened. He had been thinking of Idris like she was a human, or another Time Lord, but she was no such thing. That had been clear enough when she had burned through her human body in under an hour.

The console flashed a warning at him and he flipped the switch to turn it off, annoyed. He needed to think of a way to force her to land. The TARDIS flashed a strong negative in his head.

"Too bad," he snapped. "You're my ship. You're supposed to do as I say."

She flashed him an image then, as she sometimes did. Green and pink coral, an underlying thrum, and a sense of forestalled power.

For a moment he was nonplussed. "What are you trying to tell me? Your coral's very..." he tried to think of a word that wasn't insulting, "glowy, but what does it have to do with landing at the Library?"

Almost seeming impatient, she sent him an image of Gallifrey and the grove where she and her sisters had been grown. "What — are you saying there's another TARDIS down there?"

An affirmative pulse echoed through his mind. "That's not possible. There are no more TARDISes. There's just you."

There was no response. He sighed. "Can we at least get out of the Vortex and take a look?"

With what seemed like reluctance, she materialized in space above the library. On the monitor he could see the tiny artificial planet and its doctor moon, rotating slowly. The cameras zoomed in to show the spindly towers and high bridges. They were as empty as he expected. Nothing appeared to be amiss; he couldn't see any difference from how it had looked the last time he'd been here, with Donna and River and that idiotic archaeological team. He closed his eyes briefly, trying not to think of poor Donna. Was there anyone he'd ever loved that he hadn't destroyed?

Unsure of what else to do, he set the TARDIS running scans of the planet, which she did easily enough. If there really was another TARDIS down there, the scans would certainly pick it up, but there couldn't be. Even if the Master had somehow managed to escape certain death yet again — honestly, the man wouldn't stay dead — his biggest problem before had been the lack of a TARDIS. They had all burned with Gallifrey. He had heard their screams in his head, too, that awful day.

The monitor beeped.

TARDIS detected, the screen read.

His wide, genuine grin appeared for the first time since he'd left River. It couldn't be another Time Lord. He would have been able to hear another Gallifreyan in his head, of course, and there was still that same deafening silence he'd never really adjusted to since the day he woke up, unexpectedly alive, his body and his TARDIS both in ruins.

For the first time since he'd lost Rory and Amy he wished he had another companion, someone to share his joy and his intrigue. If nothing else, he'd just been presented with a beautiful mystery to solve. And there were very few things the Doctor liked more than unsolved mysteries.

His fingers flew over the keys, setting the controls to take them down to the surface. Surely the TARDIS wouldn't deny him now. Not when she'd shown him the curiosity herself.

He never got a chance to finish. Out of the corner of his eye, the monitor lit up, then went white. "What?" he whispered.

Before he could register what had happened, the TARDIS shook and he was knocked to the ground. He had to crawl towards the monitor as the exterior shields took a battering from debris, rocking the TARDIS violently.

What the monitor showed was unmistakeable.

The Library was gone.

****

Amy sat in the garden of their townhouse, watching her son chase a butterfly around the late-blooming hydrangeas she had planted around the flagstones. The cup of hot tea she held warmed her hands against the chill of the October day. She idly thought about how much she missed having a smartphone. Her brain had been so accustomed to multi-tasking at all times, like any young person from the early twenty-first century, that it had been very hard to adjust to living without it. She'd had hers with her when she came, but it wasn't as though it had a cellular network to run on. Not in postwar America. They had played one last honorary game of Angry Birds before hiding it away in the back of a cupboard where it couldn't be found by accident.

That wasn't the hardest part of living in the wrong time, of course. Not by a long shot. The hardest part had been the first few years after they'd arrived, struggling to establish themselves in a time and place where they knew no one, had no credentials or documentation or money, and were obviously foreigners. More than once Amy had cursed herself for not carrying one of the Doctor's psychic papers that day. Despite the fact that they both had skills still applicable to their new time — was there a time when nurses and writers didn't exist? - they had no references and no way to prove their experience. Not to mention that despite their best efforts, they constantly made anachronistic mistakes. They had no real idea what the slang was, or what exactly had been the state of medical science in World War II-era America. They were able to slide under the radar in many respects because of their accents, but there had been more than one time they were afraid they might give the game away completely. For the first six months after the angel's attack, Amy had worked as a waitress and Rory had washed dishes in a run-down diner on 10th Avenue in Manhattan. The meager income they brought home had barely been enough for the rent on a small railroad apartment overlooking the train yard. The experience they gained by listening to the locals had been invaluable.

Fortunately, in the non-electronic era, it had proved relatively easy to forge a nursing certificate for Rory and green cards for them both, once they'd found the right Staten Island mobster. Once they'd both found better work, they had rented a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and had settled in and tried to adjust.

No sooner had they gotten settled than the war came to America. It had been unbelievably strange, knowing most of what was going to happen and not being able to tell a soul. Not that anyone would have believed them if they'd said anything. The war hadn't been too difficult for Amy and Rory. Rory was considered too important at his hospital by the time the draft was enacted to be subject to it. The rationing and blackouts hadn't been too bad when she considered what was going on back in London. It was the first time she'd felt grateful to be stranded in the United States instead of England.

Rory had had a harder time than she had, adjusting to life in America fifty years before they were even born. He had been devastated that he had never been able to tell his father what happened, but Amy reassured him that the Doctor would pay Brian a visit.

She hoped he would, anyway. Truthfully she wouldn't put it past her raggedy man to run off as if the whole thing had never happened. He never dealt well with emotional pain. River was there to keep him in line, but the Doctor listened to River about as often as River listened to the Doctor.

Amy's entire body stiffened as she heard a noise she had never expected to hear again before she died. For a moment she sat frozen, her mind whirling with things that shouldn't be happening and information she shouldn't have. She looked at Anthony, who had abandoned the butterfly in favor of digging a hole next to one of the blue slate flagstones. Ordinarily she would have chastised him for damaging the rented yard. Instead she finally felt compelled into action.

She ran for the house, skidding to a halt as she grabbed the phone in the front hall. She picked it up and dialed the number for the operator. "DK121, please," she said. No matter how long she lived she would never get used to asking to be connected instead of just dialing the number.

"Connecting you now," the switchboard operator said in her nasal Brooklyn accent. Amy couldn't get used to that either.

The hospital's own switchboard operator picked up, and she demanded to be put through to her husband. "Wait just a second," the woman said, sounding unconcerned. After a pause, she said, "Ma'am, he's in with a patient right now."

"It's an emergency. Get him, now!"

"I really don't think - "

"I don't care what you think! If I have to come down there and kick your ass I'll do it! Get my husband on the phone right this minute!" Her accent thickened as she got more upset.

The operator made an annoyed-sounding huff and said, "Fine. Hold on a minute."

There was a long pause; there was no such thing as hold music in 1948. Amy waited impatiently, tapping her foot on the wood floor.

"Hello?" came Rory's uncertain-sounding voice.

"Rory! He's here. You have to come home right now!"

****

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS into the fading autumn daylight. He looked around. Brooklyn in 1948, looking just about right. The cars hadn't yet developed the swoopy-yet-ageless style of the 1950s and were relatively plain and modest. A row of townhouses, all faced in brown limestone, ran in both directions down the side street where he had landed. Did Rory and Amy live in one of these? How fitting, after their row house in London. It almost made him smile.

There was a figure trotting toward him. A tall, red-headed figure. He grinned. "Amy!"

She ran faster and he held out his arms for a hug.

Amy stopped short, ignoring his open arms, glared at him furiously, and then gave him a slap. "You idiot! Do you know what you've done?"


	3. Chapter 3

Pete kept talking to her, but she couldn't resist the urge to tune him out. There was rage growing in her, and she embraced it. The anger felt good. It felt righteous. It burned the rest of her feelings away. Her brain was spinning, thinking of who could have done this and what they might have wanted. Why would someone go to all the trouble of luring a whole Torchwood team, then kidnap the Doctor only to murder him? Had they expected the Doctor to regenerate? Presumably they'd had no idea about her, or they wouldn't have left her in the rubble. Who would want him dead? He'd done nothing but defend the Earth and humanity since arriving here. She'd questioned Pete about all this and he had no answers at all. Her fingers twisted with annoyance. The answers were surely there. Torchwood must not be looking in the right place.

Killing them, whoever they happened to be, would only be a temporary distraction. A distraction from wondering how Keira was going to react when she saw that her mother had become a completely different person. The Doctor had always said he was the same man inside and now she understood. She was the same Rose she had always been. The old Rose had never felt this pleasurable burn of rage, but then, the old Rose had never been murdered along with the Doctor before.

"Rose."

This new body kept surprising her, and her thoughts turned and twisted in ways she didn't recognize. Her teeth did, indeed, feel strange in her mouth whenever she tried to speak. Her old tics were gone, replaced with habits that didn't feel like habits at all.

"Rose. Are you listening to us at all?"

Her mother was looking at her from her seat beside her husband. "I'm sorry," she said, not feeling repentant in the slightest.

Jackie slid onto the couch next to Rose and took her daughter's hand. "Love, I can't imagine what you're going through right now. I know what it is to lose the man you love, but all the rest..." she glanced at Pete, who gave her a reassuring look. "The top priority right now has to be keeping you and Keira safe."

She blinked. "And how do you expect to do that, when you've got no idea who did this to us? Or why they did it?"

"We'll figure it out soon enough, and we'll put a stop to it. But we have to assume that whoever it was was after something to do with the Time Lords. And he didn't have whatever they were looking for, but you or Keira might. For the time being, you have to hide. You and Keira both. At least until we figure out what they wanted. If somebody figures out who you are — well, there are even forces at Torchwood itself that would like to do very unpleasant things to you and Keira both."

Rose wondered if her glare was as effective in this body as it had been in the last one. "So we're hiding out where they want to dissect me, then?"

"I've locked it down with a minimum, double-vetted staff for now, but I can't hold off the rest of the organization forever. I need to get you out of here as soon as possible. We've a safe house set up elsewhere, you and Keira will head there as soon as possible. Keira is already here with her things packed. Your mother brought some of your things from the cottage as well. Not clothes, but other things."

"You left her alone here?" she hissed, the rage rising slowly to the surface to bubble out of her like an upwelling of gas in a lake. The anger felt so much better than the black, blinding grief that waited for her just on the edge of her consciousness.

Jackie noticed her temper flaring and moved to soothe her."She's just in the next room, Rose. She's got her nanny with her."

Rose sighed, trying to relax. "I guess it's time to tell her."

"Yes, it is," Jackie agreed firmly. "What do you want me to say to her before I bring her in?"

"Tell her...oh God, mum. Don't tell her anything. Just...I'll think of something once I see her."

Jackie looked doubtful, but trotted off toward the next room. Pete was examining her with a grave expression. When he spoke his voice was low, as though he didn't want Jackie to hear. "Rose, I think you're laboring under a misconception. What did you see, when you saw Jamie's body?"

She stared at him. "I saw the gunshot wound. I saw they'd done an autopsy. I don't understand, though. Why would they just kill him and leave the body? Wouldn't they want to keep it?" She almost felt sick listening to herself talk. This new body was cold, almost to the point of cruelty. Not that she could blame it. Maybe cold was what she needed right now.

The look on her father's face made her think she wasn't cold enough. "We...we did our own autopsy, Rose. Before you woke up. It wasn't an autopsy they did, whoever they were. It was a vivisection."

She hadn't thought it would be possible for it to get any worse, the ache inside her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mum leading Keira by the hand. The combination was too much and her eyes finally welled with tears. So this body could cry, after all. She sucked in a deep breath and brushed them away as quickly as she could.

Rose's heart felt as though it was about to pound out of her chest. She'd had a day and a half to think about it and still had no idea how to tell a six-year-old that her father was dead and her mother was effectively a different person.

The little girl approached her slowly and reluctantly. She couldn't take her eyes off her daughter. How long had it been since she'd seen her? She looked like she'd grown. She always looked bigger to Rose, whenever she returned from a long mission abroad, even if the separation had only been a week or two. Keira was so beautiful. She'd inherited her mother's mouth and nose and her father's soulful brown eyes and unruly hair. She didn't carry the Time Lord DNA she could have potentially inherited, but she was brilliant, never failing to absorb any lesson her father set for her. It was one of the reasons Rose couldn't decide what to say. She was confident Keira could understand what had happened. She wasn't confident that their bond as mother and daughter would survive it.

"Hello, love," she said as gently as she could with her new low voice. She held out her hand to her daughter, but Keira stood back. Rose held her breath while her daughter spoke.

"Grandma said you're my mum and you were hurt in an accident and the doctors fixed you, but you look different now. But I don't understand. Why would fixing you make you look different? Is it like the stories Daddy used to tell? How can I -" her little voice, usually so strong and inquisitive, trembled and Rose felt like her heart had just been wrenched into pieces all over again. "How can I tell you're you?"

Rose would have simply used the link they had to prove it to her, but Keira was so young that sometimes she had a difficult time telling actual psychic communication from figments of her imagination. She didn't trust it as a result of a few bad dreams which her brain had somehow interpreted as genuine telepathy from her parents. The Doctor had said she would figure it out as she got older.

"Keira, I - " she swallowed her words, her new accent feeling unnatural and awkward. It was so posh. It didn't sound like her at all. "Keira, your father was telling you the truth with those stories. He used to have a different face, and when he got hurt, he fixed himself but he had to change his face to do it. I got hurt in an accident at work. I had to change my face or I would have died. I didn't want to do it, but I didn't want to leave you behind either. I didn't know I could do it, until I did it, or else I would have warned you before that it might happen."

Keira was looking at her with wide eyes. She didn't quite look frightened. Rose blundered on, unable to stop herself. "I'm your mum. I'm Rose Tyler. I gave birth to you in the back seat of our car after I insisted my labor was just false labor pains for the tenth time in a row and we stayed at home until it was too late." She knew Keira had heard that story a hundred times, omitting the part where Rose had nearly bled to death in the maternity ward not twenty minutes later. "You're so brilliant you started kindergarten at three and it was still far too slow for you. Your favorite bedtime story is still Goodnight Moon. Your father and I used to play hide-your-nose with you, before you decided we were embarrassing."

The six-year-old swallowed visibly. "I believe you, mum."

Rose was not at all certain whether that was actually true, but she held out her arms. Keira walked forward and held herself stiffly as she allowed her mother to hug her.

"But I want to see Daddy. Where's Daddy? Grandma said he was hurt, too."

Rose looked at her mother. Jackie met her eyes, refusing to question her own judgment. After all, she'd had to explain the same thing to her own daughter more than once.

She knelt slowly on the beige office carpet, wanting to be on her daughter's level but still feeling awkward with her long limbs. "Your daddy was hurt. He was hurt very badly. He died, love."

Keira's eyes went unfocused and Rose tensed. Then her eyes cleared and she looked at her mother. "He didn't regenerate this time?"

She shook her head slowly. "No, he couldn't. He didn't."

The little girl nodded solemnly. "I'm glad you're still alive, mummy."

Rose almost laughed and grabbed Keira in a tight hug. She didn't hug her back, but she didn't resist. Rose closed her eyes and inhaled her daughter's scent. They would get through this eventually. Maybe not right away, but one day.

If they had that long.

****

Rose didn't toss and turn restlessly in the little double bed at the safe-house, as she'd become so prone to since she'd been trapped in the parallel universe. She lay stock-still, unable to sleep and unwilling to move.

She wanted to cry again, but it seemed this new body wasn't much of a crier. Would it have wept that day on the beach all those years ago? She'd barely wept over the loss of her human Doctor. The searing pain and horror that filled her from head to toe when she thought about him was far worse than any tears she'd ever shed. How could he — have they — have left her like this? Had they known, had they suspected, either one of them? She had known that something was different about her ever since the Bad Wolf, but she had never been able to put her finger on what it was. Sure, she'd healed improbably well from some gruesome injuries obtained during use of the Dimension Cannon, but she had never thought she would actually grow herself a new body if the injuries were bad enough.

"The one life I can never have, Rose," he'd said. She hadn't guessed then that she couldn't have that life either. Not anymore.

How could the Doctor not have known? She'd seen him willfully ignore things he didn't want to think about before — Bad Wolf just for a start - but in retrospect, it was obvious. Her ability to comprehend the timelines, her skill in using the Dimension Cannon so much greater than everyone else's. Her near-endless energy and swift ability to learn new alien tongues. She hadn't slept for six days before she'd finally found her Doctor during the Dalek invasion. How could anyone have missed it?

A low boom echoed through her room and she jolted upright. What the hell was that? It had sounded like a sonic boom. She climbed out of the bed and slipped her clothes back on. Pete had promised to obtain more clothes for her, but for now all she had was the set she'd received in the hospital and one spare. She only had one pair of knickers and one bra.

The door to Keira's room was on her left and she peeked inside. The little girl lay unmoving, asleep as far as she could see. The sonic boom hadn't awakened her.

She hurried down the darkened hall to the living room, where Pete and Jackie had elected to sleep until they decided on Rose and Keira's next move. The light was already on and Pete was on his phone. Her mother mouth was set grimly. Whatever it was, it was bad.

Pete ended his call and immediately asked her, "Rose, is there some way you can start the TARDIS?"

"Why?"

"The ones who're looking for you? They're back. They've got some kind of a ship hovering over London, and they've detected Torchwood headquarters. The President is sending in the army but it looks like they won't get there in time to save the people we left there." She had never heard him sound so angry in her life, not even when he found out she'd been using the Dimension Cannon without his approval.

"We could hide in her, I guess. But if they're looking for Time Lord technology, won't starting her up just draw them out faster than anything?"

"Exactly," Pete said coldly. "We're going to set up an ambush. When they get there, the full force of Torchwood tech and the military together will be waiting for them. We need you to use the TARDIS to lure them there."

Rose nodded. "We can do that. I can start the self-destruct sequence."

Pete visibly relaxed when he realized she wasn't going to fight him on the destruction of the TARDIS. "I know it'll be difficult for you, to lose that last part of him, but we're better off without that thing if we don't have the Doctor to control it. There are too many people and aliens who'd love to get their hands on it."

She steeled her shoulders. "You have to get me there."

"We can do that. It'll have to be in and out through the park adjacent to the property. You've done that sort of thing before."

"Yes, I have," Rose said.

****

As soon as she'd slipped through the door she slid the lock shut behind her. The young man who'd accompanied her paused before he started to knock, then pound on the door. She ignored him. No one would be able to come in now. She doubted Pete would approve the use of any sort of major firepower while she was inside, and even if he did, the heavy shields they'd implemented a few months back should hold, even against the Torchwood arsenal. Besides, soon enough they'd have whoever the hostile aliens were to contend with.

She touched the console affectionately. They hadn't expected the baby TARDIS to be ready for anything but short-distance moves for at least another year. Donna's suggestions had helped, but growing an organism as complex as a TARDIS simply took time.

Time she no longer had.

The Doctor had had the primary bond with the little ship, but she had had her own bond. Not as strong, and Rose had no idea how to operate most of the primary functions the Doctor performed, but it was there.

She had to hope it would be enough. She only had one idea for making everything work. If it failed, she had no doubt she and Keira would be taken and probably killed.

She closed her eyes and opened her mind to the TARDIS the way the Doctor had taught her. She could feel her there, a delicate presence sending tendrils through her brain. The feeling was welcoming; she didn't feel frightened like she had the first time she'd made full contact with the juvenile time machine. She tried to picture what she needed, but there was no reaction. Feeling desperate — how much time did she really have before the aliens caught up to her? - she tried to show her the urgency of the situation. She showed her the Doctor's corpse laid out in the morgue, little Keira with a gun to her head, Torchwood under fire. There was a clicking inside her, as though the TARDIS was indicating she understood. Then there was a louder clicking as a familiar panel on the side of the console popped open. Rose's eyes widened in surprise. She sent pictures of what had happened the last time she'd done that and felt a deep, warm reassurance flood through her. The TARDIS was telling her that wouldn't happen this time. Tentatively, she asked what would happen, and got back a series of images so nonsensical she could hardly process them at all.

Nervous, she clenched her hands into fists and slowly approached the opening in the side of the console. The golden light there beckoned to her and she felt it fill her mind. She felt her self begin to dissolve in the overwhelming power of the Time Vortex and she welcomed it.

The TARDIS stretched and grew and aged artificially, the screaming of the baby machine's pain echoing in her mind. Time within her boundaries rippled. She struggled to control it, feeling her body resist and finally begin to die. They would both suffer and be reborn. When the fires of regeneration burnt through her she knew it was done. Slowly, she released the Time Vortex, allowing it to flow back into the heart of the TARDIS.

Then she stood and allowed the golden light to immolate her body.


	4. Chapter 4

When Rose fluttered her eyes open, the world looked slightly different. Colors were dimmer and objects at a distance seemed a little blurry. "Fuckin' hell," she muttered. "I need glasses." She blinked. She hadn't meant to curse. It had popped out of her mouth as naturally as her own name. Maybe this body needed a censor too.

She looked around. The baby TARDIS had a full console room now, lit gently in orange and green. The look was generally more industrial than the old TARDIS, with a lot of hard metal and large rivets and bolts. Corrugated steel covered the walls and pillars, the soft light giving it an eerie feel. Hallways ran off from most of the eight sides of the room. She would have to investigate the rest of it later. For now, it appeared to be fully functional. She could hardly believe it had worked. The thought had come to her as though from nowhere, and it had seemed completely insane, but somehow she'd known it would work. Was this how the Doctor got his ideas?

There were sounds coming from outside the TARDIS. Unpleasant sounds like gunfire and screams. The aliens had found them, then. She felt a momentary pang of guilt for having left the rest of the Torchwood crew out to face the threat by themselves. The old her probably wouldn't have done that. The bleached-blonde Rose Tyler had never left a team member behind.

She did not consider opening the door and letting them inside. She had written off Torchwood the moment Pete had informed her he intended to sacrifice the TARDIS.

He didn't understand, couldn't understand. She couldn't do anything to harm the baby TARDIS, any more than she could harm Keira. There was a link between them. It had been there from the moment she and the Doctor had succeeded at getting the little bit of coral to spark to life and germinate. And with an unknown threat and an unknown power bearing down on them, the TARDIS was the only means she had to protect her daughter.

The protecting thing involved the other part of her plan working, of course. She ran around the console, flipping switches and pressing buttons whose purpose she had been only vaguely aware of a few days ago. Now it came naturally to her. She smiled and pressed a kiss to one of the pillars as she ran by.

The TARDIS sent her a weak wave of affection in return. The little time machine was sick; Rose could feel it in the air as though she were breathing in the germs. As soon as she had rescued her family, they would have to find a spot on the rift. Somewhere to recharge her and let her heal. She set the coordinates for the little cottage where her parents and daughters were ensconced, and grinned to herself when the young time machine eased gently into the Vortex.

****

Jackie Tyler paced the little cottage, the heels on her shoes clacking across the worn wood, her eyes never leaving her granddaughter. The sun had come up an hour ago and Keira had woken soon after. She was glad she had left Tony at his best friend's house, a good ten miles from the mansion. He was safer there, and he was still too young to understand what had happened — hell, Jackie herself didn't really understand it - and she didn't want him to be afraid of his sister, or afraid for Keira. Keira herself was going to grow up too fast. There was no way to avoid it now. It made Jackie feel viscerally ill, but better a childhood cut short than an entire life. She could see it beginning already, the fear in the little girl's eyes already changing into the saddest kind of precocious maturity. Rose had never known her father; Keira's had lived long enough for her to love him and hollow out that space inside herself where his memory would always reside.

"Grandma, I've got to use the toilet."

Jackie lifted her bleary, sleep-deprived eyes to the six-year-old. "What? You don't have to ask my permission."

The little girl looked at her for a moment, her eyes grave and sad. Then she turned and left the room. Jackie sighed.

The sound of larger, more masculine footsteps behind her made her jump. "Jackie. We've gotta go, they're coming."

"What? How? How do you know?"

"We can detect their ship on the radar. It just blew up half our neighborhood back in London and now it's headed north. Where do you think it's going?"

She gave him her patented I'm-Jackie-Tyler-and-you're-insane look. "We can't leave. Rose is coming here to get Keira."

"We lost contact with the team, but that whole area was destroyed. We need to go now. Rose is probably dead," he added harshly when he realized she was going to balk.

"Yes, she is," said a completely unfamiliar voice.

Pete and Jackie both whipped around as though they'd been struck. Before them stood a young woman — no more than sixteen or seventeen by Jackie's eyes - with straight, shiny black hair clipped into a sleek bob around her face. Her brown eyes shone with anxiety and — was that a hint of an all-too-familiar manic madness?

"I had a feeling you might try to leave without me," the stranger continued. "Fortunately, the TARDIS is operational now."

Pete stared at her. "What happened? It's you, isn't it, Rose?"

She nodded. "Yes, it is. I had to sacrifice that body in order to get the TARDIS operational and protect it from the aliens. And from you, Pete."

He stiffened. "It was the only option, Rose."

"Obviously bloody not," she drawled, and Jackie noticed her daughter now had a slight Welsh lilt to her words. "I'm here, and I've brought the TARDIS, although I can't say the same for the Torchwood people who accompanied me. Had to leave them behind, I'm afraid."

Jackie was shocked by her attitude. She almost sounded flippant, and about people's lives. Rose had known some of those people.

"What did you do?" Pete snarled, reaching for her throat. "After you put us all in danger in the first place!"

She dodged him easily as Jackie gasped, "Pete! What are you doing?"

Rose stood across the room from them, her arms crossed across her chest. "You're right about one thing, dad. We need to go now. The question is, should I allow you to enter a time machine you just tried to destroy?"

"Rose!"

Her daughter spun around, ignoring her mother's shocked protestation, and before Jackie even realized the little girl was in the room, Keira was in her arms. The little girl struggled, but Rose ignored her and left through the same hallway Keira had just come through. Jackie followed.

They came out into the kitchen, where there was an unfamiliar cabinet taking up half the floorspace. Rose winced. "She's not too good at compression yet." With that, she took her key and unlocked the cabinet door, shoving Keira through the door and blocking the rest of it with her body. "Are you coming, Mum?"

Jackie hesitated. "Rose, I can't..."

"We have to go now. I think I might have an idea what they want with us, and Keira and I are both going to be targets. You won't be safe, and neither will we, until we're well away."

She looked back for her husband and heard him angrily shouting into his phone on the other side of the cottage. "I can't, Rose! There's Tony, and Pete, and..."

Her daughter nodded. "I understand, Mum. I really do. I love you. Don't forget that." Something sparked behind Rose, and she hissed a curse word under her breath.

With that she shut the door, and a few seconds later the TARDIS dematerialized. Jackie noticed it didn't make the familiar whooshing noise, just vanished gradually into thin air as though it had never been blocking off half the kitchen and the back entrance to the house.

She closed her eyes and waited for her husband. She knew she would never see her daughter or her granddaughter again.

****

Jack was minding his own business, drowning his sorrows in yet another anonymous pub on a planet as far from Earth as he could manage to travel, when a TARDIS materialized right in front of him.

At first he thought he must be more drunk than he was capable of getting anymore. He'd had a dozen hypervodkas before deciding he preferred the awful beer they made on this planet, and he'd had a dozen more of them while sitting in this booth and staring at the dirty wall. He knew his body, though, and he knew he wasn't that drunk. There was only one contraption in the universe he knew of that could do what he'd just witnessed.

It looked nothing like the TARDIS he had known so long ago. For one thing, its chameleon circuit was fully functional, and it disguised itself as a large bureau placed in a dimly lit corner. For another, it didn't make that distinctive whooshing noise the Doctor's TARDIS had always made. If he hadn't been staring at that wall, he never would have realized that a time machine had just appeared ten feet from where he sat drinking a frankly foul cup of ale.

As he watched, a petite redhead in a jumper and a knee-length skirt opened the door and peeked out, looking vaguely bemused. Then her eyes focused on him and widened. She marched out — and marched was the right word for it, he decided, her heels practically clicking away in military formation. "Jack! I was hoping to find you. Well, I knew you were here. Well, I didn't know, but I was pretty sure."

A Time Lady? Was that what they called the female Time Lords? He had no idea. They'd all been long dead by the time he went into training for the Time Agency. More myth than history, really. She shouldn't exist at all. The Doctor had always said he was the last of them.

Of course, the Doctor had been wrong about that before, and Jack had paid the price. "Who the hell are you? Are you a Time Lady?"

"A what? Oh, is that what they were called? I never did know."

He stared at the bar, deciding this was not as interesting as the bottom of his glass. What did he care about Time Lords anymore? Where had his Time Lord been when he needed him? "If you're not going to tell me who you are, can you please fuck off and let me resume drinking myself into the grave again?"

She reached out and tried to take his hand, but he flinched away from her. "Jack, it's me. It's Rose Tyler. I know it's been awhile..."

Jack rolled his eyes at her. "You're not Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler was a stacked London blonde. Not to mention she's probably been dead a hundred years."

"You should have been dead hundreds of years ago too, Jack. I changed you. I changed myself and I didn't even know it because the Doctor erased my memories of it. He didn't know what I'd done. He never knew."

"Whoever you are, you're not like me. I'm well over two thousand years old, and I still look the same as I did the day I died and Rose brought me back to life."

She sat next to him companionably, which annoyed him deeply, but he didn't get up. "I didn't change like you did. The TARDIS changed me, I think. She wanted me...compatible with the Doctor."

"So, what, you're a Time Lord?" He couldn't keep his incredulity out of his tone.

"No. But I have a third strand of DNA like they do. I regenerate and I don't really age. Would you believe I'm pushing four hundred? Well..." She sounded so much like the Doctor when she said that word that for a moment he almost believed her. "The regeneration thing hasn't been easy. I don't know quite what's wrong, but I never understood what was happening to me. Maybe it doesn't work as well with human DNA, I don't know. It wasn't like I ever got the kind of schooling the Doctor did. I had to figure things out on my own. The TARDIS tries to help, but she's a child herself, and she grew up in the wrong universe. I don't think she's ever been quite right, either."

"So you regenerated." He looked her up and down. He wouldn't call her quite as attractive as she'd once been, but there was something about her that drew the eye. She had long, wavy red hair and pale freckled skin. She was quite short of stature, especially by Jack's 51st-century standards, and her whole body was petite to match. "You're a Time Lord or something like it. You regenerated, and you somehow escaped from that other universe the Doctor trapped you in? What did you do with the other Doctor, the clone?"

She flinched. "You knew about that?"

"I ran Torchwood, Rose. I knew everything they knew about the Doctor and his companions." She was grinning at him. "What?"

"You called me Rose! You believe me!"

"Maybe," he said gruffly.

"You do! You know it's me." She looked so pleased with herself, leaning on one tiny arm and smiling. "Do you know how hard it is to convince people you're you when you have a completely new body?"

He sat back from the bar, pushing his beer away. "So let's say I do believe you. Why'd you come across universes and to this little hell-hole looking for me? Nice war going on outside, I thought it would keep any potential company away. And no more of that changing the subject to avoid my questions thing. Don't pretend like I don't know where you learned that."

"I wasn't looking for you specifically, Jack. I asked the TARDIS to find anyone whose genetic signature she had on file who was still alive. I came through to this universe entirely by accident and the TARDIS is quite badly damaged. I don't trust her to travel through time, only space. She's also uncalibrated for this universe. I know we're not in my time, but I don't know exactly when we are. I need to find out, because something ripped that hole in the universes I fell through, and I'm sure you remember the last time that happened, and who was responsible."

Jack grabbed his drink and took another swig, preferring not to think about those pepperpot bastards."I don't know exactly when we are either," he admitted. "I set my vortex manipulator for random."

"Torchwood not working out?"

He almost laughed. "There is no more Torchwood."

She touched his arm and he finally allowed it. Her touch was as warm and empathetic as it had ever been. "Do you want to come inside my TARDIS and tell me about it?"

"Rose Tyler, if I didn't know better, I'd think that was a pickup line."

She grinned at him again. "How do you know it wasn't?"

****

Several hours later, he was considerably more sober and scrubbed clean in the little TARDIS's cozy shower room at Rose's insistence. When he stepped out of the bathroom into her living quarters, in fresh clothes provided by the TARDIS, she gave him that sunny smile and patted the overstuffed sofa next to her. "Feel better?"

He thought about what had happened on Earth not that long ago. Did he ever stop thinking about that? Would he ever stop thinking about it? He didn't think he would, not if he lived a billion more years.

God, he wanted another drink. "Much," he lied. "So, are you ever going to tell me what happened to you in the four hundred years since I last saw you?"

"Are you going to tell me what you've been doing for the last two thousand years?" She patted the cushion beside her again, suddenly reminding him of his overbearing grandmother.

"You don't want to know." He finally acquiesced and sat beside her.

"I could say the same." She reached out and brushed the wet hair off his brow. "Why are we doing this to each other? I still love you, Jack. I always did and I always missed you. Does it really matter, what's happened in the interim?"

He let her touch him. It had been an awfully long time since he'd let anyone do that. She cupped his cheek and he said raggedly, "Answer one question for me."

"I can do that," she said, not taking her hand off his face.

"Did you know what happened to me on the Gamestation?"

"Not at first, no," she said without hesitation. "The Doctor erased my memories of actually being the Bad Wolf. He told me you weren't dead, that you were helping rebuild the Earth, but it was like when you're a kid and your mum tells you they sent your dog to the farm. I thought you must be dead."

"Are you calling me a dog?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm sure you've been called worse." Before he could retort, she continued. "I first found out you were still alive when I started jumping dimensions. I saw you on a jump when I was looking for the Doctor in Cardiff, and I knew something was strange about you. I didn't know what it was until the Daleks shot you in front of me. I didn't put two and two together about my involvement until later."

"The Doctor said it was painful just being in a room with me. He said I was wrong."

Rose scowled. "That man and his mouth, I could give him a slap just like my mum did. Well, that's not how it is for me. You just feel a bit strange to me, like time doesn't flow properly around you." She scooted closer to him, until she was practically in his lap. He wasn't sure whether he wanted that or not. He didn't think he deserved it. Following her example, he changed the subject.

"I know who this regeneration reminds me of, and it's not you."

"Oh?"

"No — it's him! Your Doctor. You sound just like him."

She chuckled in a way that indicated she'd had the thought before. "Well, he did always want to be ginger."

"He's going to be so jealous when you finally find him."

Jack couldn't fully describe the emotions that flitted across her face at those words. Anger, fear, anticipation, and one he was more than a little familiar with himself. The kind of expression that indicated someone had lived far too long, and had so many terrible experiences that even the good ones could never truly take away the emptiness inside them anymore. He'd often thought he should have died long ago. From the looks of things, Rose felt the same way. "Well. We'll see," was all she finally said.

"You don't want to see him?" he asked, not knowing why he was twisting the knife.

"Do you?"

He had to look away again. "Not really," Jack admitted.

There was a long moment of silence between them. Rose was close enough to him now that he could feel the heat radiating off her body. He leaned forward, closing the last distance between them, and her lips met his. She tasted wonderful and he wanted more. He didn't deserve it, would only hurt her, but he wanted it.

Then, as though she'd read his mind — maybe she had — she pushed him gently away. She hesitated, playing with the collar of his shirt, seeming embarrassed. "What's wrong?" he asked gently.

"I...well, you know, this is my fourth regeneration."

He blinked, momentarily horrified. She'd regenerated four times already? Was she as careless with her lives as Jack and the Doctor were with theirs? Seeing his expression, she hurried on. "It's just...I've never had sex in this body, Jack."

Oh. Well, that wasn't exactly where he'd thought she was going. At least it was easy enough to deal with. And he of all people should have thought of that."Are you nervous?"

"A little," she admitted.

He nuzzled her cheek, kissing her eyelid. "There's nothing to be nervous about, Rose. You know I'll take care of you. I always have, right?"

She gave him the strangest smile, her eyes much too sad. "It's been a long time since anyone's taken care of me but me."

Jack touched his forehead to hers. "Let me, love." Then he kissed her, and he couldn't remember the last time a kiss had felt this sweet. He tugged at her jumper and she allowed him to pull it over her head, breaking the kiss and smiling at him. Her breasts in this incarnation were as petite as the rest of her, and she wasn't wearing a bra. Her nipples were already peaked with arousal, standing stiffly above her breasts. Rose's hands skimmed down his sides before finding their way under his shirt. She grabbed the hem and pulled it up and over his head. Her fingertips found his newly bared skin and mapped it out.

He laid her back on the sofa, kissing his way expertly down her chest before lavishing attention on one of those nipples, tracing the tiny individual bumps with his tongue. Her hands came up and tangled in his hair, scraping at his scalp with sharp nails. He gave the other nipple its own equal share of attention before moving lower, pulling her skirt and knickers down in one smooth movement.

His fingers found her center and she whimpered. What would it be like, he wondered, to be a virgin all over again? To not even know how you would react to the most basic of sexual stimulation? He slid his middle finger lower, dipping into the natural lubricant slowly welling between her lips. His finger easily slipped back up to her clit, giving it a wide berth before finally zeroing in on it with the lightest of touches. Her back arched into his touch, her legs spreading wider as her thigh muscles quivered.

"Oh, God," she moaned out. "Jack, please. Please, just make love to me. I want to feel you, I need you inside me."

He would have liked to show off his prowess — he still had it after all these years — but he couldn't say no to an honest plea. Yanking off his trousers and pants, he tossed them aside. He climbed back over her, coming to rest between her spread thighs, and kissed her again. Her mouth followed his as he adjusted his position and used the wetness on his fingers to slick his cock. He was going to have to be gentle, and after so long without so much as a gentle caress, that was going to be very difficult.

Rose's face went still as he entered her, stopping less than halfway in, and he couldn't tell if he was hurting her or not. "I'm fine," she reassured him, and adjusted her hips so he could slide the rest of the way inside. Jack gasped. She may have not been feeling any pain, but she was small and the unused muscles inside her were stiff and tight. He hadn't experienced anything like it in a very long time, and he fought back a tear as emotion welled inside him where he'd been so hollow before.

She twitched her hips against his, and he realized he'd forgotten for a second just where he was. So much for his famous bedroom skills. He pulled out and thrust back in again and Rose slid an arm around his neck to pull him closer for a kiss. When she released him he began to build a familiar rhythm, Rose's moans getting progressively louder as she approached her orgasm. "Harder," she ordered through a shuddering breath.

The sofa absorbed the blows as he slammed into her, the friction so intense it was all he could do to hold himself off. Then she came, suddenly, her muscles clamping so tight he couldn't move, but it didn't matter. He was coming with her, and as he emptied himself inside her body, the hollowness inside him disappeared for just a second.

****

After, Jack slept briefly, then awoke with Rose still curled alongside him, tucked between his body and the back of the sofa. She was sound asleep, her eyelids twitching visibly as her optical nerves reacted to her dream. As he watched her, he realized that for the first time in years, he was actually interested in what tomorrow might bring.

"Rose Tyler," he murmured quietly, so as not to wake her. "You really are the best."


	5. Chapter 5

"Amy! Stop hitting him!"

Amy spun around to glare at her husband. "He's done it, he's really done it!"

"I can see that," Rory said carefully. "But how is smacking him going to help?"

"It'll make me feel better!"

Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, the Doctor grabbed Amy's arms and pinned them to her sides. Huffing, she shrugged him off and moved toward Rory. He sighed. This wasn't exactly the welcome he'd been expecting. He'd thought they deserved to hear about River from him, to know what had happened to her. He'd initially overestimated the damage the Angels had done to this time period. With them and their paradox gone, it had begun to heal a bit. Getting here had been rough on the TARDIS, but she'd done it for him, knowing how badly he needed to see Amelia Pond one last time. It was dangerous to be here, but as long as he kept it short, there shouldn't be any serious damage to any timelines. There was enough elasticity left to accommodate one visit. Time was running out. Story of his life, really — Time Lord who never had enough time.

"Can we go somewhere to talk?" he asked, sounding plaintive.

"Where's Anthony?" Rory asked Amy.

"I left him in the garden. We should go in. I shouldn't have left him, I was just..." Ignoring the Doctor, who was clearly still in her bad books, she marched across the street. Rory gave the Doctor an apologetic look and jogged after her.

He followed them into a classic Brooklyn townhouse. He had been to Brooklyn when these beautiful little structures were being constructed, in the 1880s. The Doctor flinched, remembering what conditions in the city had been like back then and feeling very grateful that Amy and Rory hadn't been sent back that far. At least they had electricity in the mid-twentieth century.

This townhouse still had its precious, delicate limestone facade, nearly as pristine as the day it had been installed. Tiny fossils stood outlined against the brown stone. The foyer had been modernized, with simple black-and-white tile and a rotary phone on a small table.

"Oooh, a rotary phone! I haven't seen one of these in ages!" the Doctor gushed, examining the shiny metal of the rotary dial. He could practically feel Rory roll his eyes.

"Not so exciting when you have to use it," he said dryly, noting that the Doctor wouldn't look him in the eyes. Rory never missed anything. "So why are you here, Doctor? What could have happened that was worth ripping a hole in the fabric of time and space? Didn't you tell us about the time loops and how it would be impossible to come here?"

Amy chose that second to pull a small boy back into the foyer. The Doctor estimated his age at around three years. He was blond and brown-eyed and stared at the Doctor for a moment before burying his face in Amy's leg.

"Anthony?" the Doctor asked. Rory nodded. "Amy, you told me - "

"He's adopted," she said shortly. "His birth mum was widowed in the war. She didn't want to raise a child alone."

The Doctor knelt down on the toddler's level and said, "You've got the best mummy in the world now, haven't you?"

The little boy nodded solemnly. The Doctor didn't miss Amy and Rory exchanging a glance. Amy said, "Let's go into the garden. We need to have a long talk."

She sounded so much like...well, like a mum, that the Doctor had to smile.

****

Rory and Amy sat together on the back patio, allowing the toddler to resume running amok with his shovel. He promptly sat in the dirt at the back of the garden and started trying to dig up the flagstones. The Doctor sat across from them, twiddling his fingers nervously. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be chastised by your parents after missing curfew. He'd never had proper parents. Or a curfew.

He told them what had happened, that he'd witnessed River's death before he'd known either of them, and before he'd had any idea who she really was. That he never expected to see her again. That when he'd gone to the Library for one last goodbye, it had exploded.

They exchanged a glance. "Doctor, we already knew that," Amy said, surprisingly gentle compared to her earlier words.

The Doctor blinked. "How?"

"We — had a visitor, about six months ago. We can't tell you much more than that, but she told us about River and how you were going to come here out of guilt and that...the end result of that was going to be bad. Very bad. She said she couldn't stop you from coming here, but she hoped we could talk you out of what you're planning on doing next."

For a moment he was stunned into silence. Then the words were pouring out of him, accompanied by the anger he always felt when he didn't understand something. "Who was it? Who came here? It was incredibly difficult to get here, I know River burned out her Vortex Manipulator after her first trip. No time-traveler should have been able to get here! I risked the integrity of space-time to visit you, now tell me what I need to know!"

Amy and Rory looked at each other again. He knew it was just the mild telepathy that came with being a long-term couple, even for humans, but it had always made him jealous. "Tell me!"

"Someone from your past and your future. She said she'll be meeting you again soon. She said — that you think you'll be helping, but you won't." Amy leaned forward and touched his face gently. He could feel the compassion radiating from her. He didn't want to feel that right now, didn't want to be condescended to by an ape. He shook her off.

The Doctor stood up. "You are human. Whoever this was — they were human too, right?"

Amy shrugged. "She looked human. I know that doesn't mean much, though."

"Human! Humans cannot see what I can see! There's nothing coming, nothing!"

These particular humans were unimpressed by his rant. "She said you'd say that," Amy replied.

"Who was she?" he shouted.

The toddler, who had previously been ignoring the adult conversation, burst into tears at the anger in the Doctor's voice. Amy gave the Doctor a dirty look and ran to him, pulling him into her arms and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. The little boy looked at the Doctor wide-eyed over her shoulder, his eyes and nose running onto her shirt. He deflated a bit. It had been an awfully long time since he'd made a child cry.

Rory stood up. "I think you'd better go," he said quietly.

Abruptly the Doctor sat, feeling as though all the air had been drained from him. "But this is probably the last time I'll be able to visit. I'll never see you again."

Rory sighed. "I know that, Doctor. But you have to remember, it's been longer for us than it's been for you. We've already...mourned you. We adjusted to living here, in a place and time where we don't belong, and we've learned to be happy without you, without everyone we love. And now here you are deliberately damaging the universe to come visit us. We love you, and we'll never forget you. But you don't belong here, and you should leave."

He started to speak again, then stopped himself, hating the lump in his throat. Could this have gone any worse? Not only did they want him to leave, they implied that he had done damage he hadn't detected by coming here. He didn't understand how it was possible. Who had been here before him? Who would do something like this? Who could do something like this?

As he slowly plodded back toward the TARDIS, Amy caught up with him, turning him with a hand on his shoulder. He stopped and waited for her to speak.

"You've been travelling alone, haven't you?"

He hesitated, but he didn't want to lie to her. He knew she knew the real answer. "Yes," he said dully.

Before he knew what had hit him he had an armful of warm Pond. "Stupid," she criticized gently. He hugged her back fiercely, burying his face in her warm, sweet-smelling hair. Not for the first time he wondered if he should have done things differently. So many different paths they could have gone down, and none of them but the one he'd inadvertently chosen leading to his separation from her. Whatever River said, he didn't care that Amy was getting older, not really. He still wanted her by his side. He could feel her absence in his mind, the warm simplicity of the human mind that had comforted him ever since he'd crash-landed in her garden. He knew they didn't understand that it felt to him like they had died.

"Doctor, I wanted to say one more thing. I don't want you to leave angry."

He looked at her, noticing the age spots that had begun to appear on her fair skin, the fine lines forming around her eyes. She was still beautiful, of course; both physically and in the mental realm where he knew she would shine gorgeously until the day she died. As she pulled away from him, he saw a few white hairs interspersed with the ginger. "I don't want to leave angry."

"I know you didn't mean any harm in coming here," she said. "And I probably shouldn't say this to you. But whatever happens in the future — whatever you think is going to happen in the future — you can't change it, you can't fix it. We don't want you to try, either. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, Doctor. You of all people should know that."

He was stunned into silence. What was going to happen? What was he missing here?

Mistaking his silence for acquiescence, Amy told him farewell and kissed his forehead. He closed his eyes and released her reluctantly, watching as she walked back to her townhouse and out of his life for the last time. He watched their timelines diverge with a terrible finality. He had already violated the laws of time for this visit, and he could see that it would not happen again.

Unable to resist, he reached out for Amy's timeline, images flashing past as her future unravelled before him. She and Rory aged together as their son grew into adulthood, watching with pride as he became a good man. Then there was a flash of something and he saw Amy, locked in a small windowless room, her arms trapped in a straitjacket. Her hair was mostly gray and her eyes were lined and her mouth was open as she screamed one word.

_Doctor._

****

Rose smiled as she watched Jack tinkering under the console of her TARDIS. She was so glad, of all the people she'd known in this universe, that he was the one she'd found. No one, short of a certain Time Lord she was in no hurry to see, would understand so well how she felt, the soul-destroying pain of outliving everyone you loved, again and again. The difficulty of understanding that when no one else would make the hard decisions, you would have to. Seeing the future possibilities of all the awful things that could happen if they didn't make those choices never made things any easier for Rose.

They had spent a relaxed, if not happy, few weeks together. Sex and solitude were healing and they had plenty of both. Jack stopped drinking and seemed to spend a lot of his time thinking. She knew something — maybe more than one thing — truly awful must have happened to have damaged her characteristically exuberant friend in this way. He hadn't been like this the last time she'd seen him, all those years ago in the Medusa Cascade. When she had mentioned taking him back to Earth, he'd shuddered visibly and asked to be taken anywhere else. She had been tempted to probe at his mind and find out what he was hiding from her, but she could never do that to him. It was his choice to keep his pain to himself, just as it was hers. He was certainly thinking about it now. She could practically see the gears of his mind turning as he processed his memories.

She decided to keep them in the Vortex temporarily while she decided what to do, and while the TARDIS finished healing. Jack had had no insight into what could have dragged her TARDIS back to this universe. The TARDIS had no idea either, her senses still off-kilter, as though she was trying to navigate underwater instead of through space and time. She could detect no gaps or holes in the void between universes, but was that because they didn't exist, or because she was so badly damaged? There must have been a hole at one point, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

At least she'd been able to properly calibrate the TARDIS using Jack's Vortex Manipulator. She knew when and where they were. She still didn't know why. In all her years traveling the parallel universe, it had never occurred to her she might make her way back. The knowledge that filtered into her brain after she regenerated had made the obstacles of travel between universes obvious to her. When she thought about it, it was surprising the Time Lords had even managed it, but the Doctor had assured her they had. She frowned to herself. A lot of things she'd seen in her hundreds of years had made her wonder if the Doctor simply lied to humans or if he had been lied to by the Time Lords themselves.

Jack pulled himself out from under the console, the muscles in his strong arms peeking out from his white t-shirt. She grinned at him and he gave her his old smile in return. "You see something you like?"

"Well, you do look pretty good for a relic."

"A relic!" Jack looked around as though for an invisible audience. "She calls me a relic. And what does that make you then? You're not exactly a 19-year-old shopgirl anymore."

Rose shrugged. "I'll have you know this body is very young. I've barely even put any marks on it yet."

Jack leered at her. "Are you telling me you're underage?"

She snickered. "Jack, you are the only person I know who spends more time contemplating the sexual possibilities of regeneration than the immortality ones."

"That's right. There's only one Jack Harkness in all the universe."

Rose almost said _Actually, there's another Jack Harkness in that other universe and I knew him very well_, but Jack didn't need to know that. What good would the story of how she'd traveled with his duplicate do him? The other universe's Jack had met an even less kind fate than her Jack. Instead, changing the subject, she said, "I might be able to fix you."

"Fix me? Fix me how?"

"Make you...mortal again. Make you normal." At his skeptical look, she said, "I have the Time Vortex inside me. It's what made me able to regenerate. When I want to, I can...access that power."

"How safe is that for you?"

She smiled at him. Trust Jack to still be concerned about her. "Not too safe. But it was me who did this to you in the first place, and I want to make it right."

His brow creased. "The Doctor told me about what you did. He said he couldn't fix it. He said no one could."

Rose shrugged. "He's a Time Lord. They don't know everything."

Jack snorted. "Obviously. Otherwise he never would have let you out of his sight."

She stared off into space. "I don't know about that. I was never sure how much he saw of my future. It's harder to see, when you're close to someone. When you have feelings for them."

"So what did happen? I never really got any details out of the Doctor. Only seen him briefly since then, honestly."

"He dropped me and the meta-crisis clone — we wound up calling him Jamie Noble — back in the parallel universe without so much as a goodbye. I never even talked to him when we were all on the TARDIS. He and Jamie had plotted it between them and he told me about it later. The Doctor was afraid of what might happen with two of the same Doctor in the same universe, and he felt incredibly guilty that his refusal to regenerate had harmed Donna. He wanted us gone, out of his sight, so off we went."

"No special treatment even for the girl he loved?"

She hesitated. "I'm not sure he did love me by then. I mean — he loved me, yes. But he'd already mourned me once and he didn't want to do it again over my actual grave. I think it was easier for him to give me up, thinking that way." She paused again. She wasn't sure how much of her past she really wanted to talk about. Even after all these years it still hurt so much, the pain leaking through the cracks in the mental walls she'd put up to save her sanity. But she wasn't the Doctor. She didn't really believe she knew what was best for other people. "But Jamie was — he was wonderful, Jack. I loved him just as much as the Doctor, maybe more. He was everything the Doctor had been, but that little piece of Donna...well, let's just say it was nice having a Doctor who could tell me how he felt instead of clamming up every time his feelings came into play. Jamie told me that was part of the Time Lord training, that they repressed their emotions on every level. It even made sense. You didn't want a Time Lord using the power of the cosmos to destroy their romantic rivals, or anything like that."

"That's not very healthy," Jack said. "No wonder he was always so angsty."

Rose snorted a laugh. "That's one way to put it. Jamie had that in him too, but he became so much better at expressing his feelings, and I think it really helped him to finally deal with them. By the time we'd been together a few years he almost never had nightmares anymore." She and Jack had been witness to their first Doctor's nightmares on the rare occasions he slept, his screams and sobs waking them and drawing them from across the ship. He had never let them into his room, insisting gruffly that he was fine, no matter how obvious it had been that he was anything but.

Jack seemed to sense her hesitation. "How long did you have with him?"

"Eight years. Eight amazing years."

"What happened?" he asked, his voice soft.

"He — we were both killed on a mission for Torchwood. I regenerated, which was...a rather enormous surprise. He didn't."

Jack flinched visibly. "Oh God, Rose, I'm so sorry."

"It was a long time ago," she said distantly. "I've put it behind me." She tilted her head at him and she knew from the expression on his face that he was a little bit afraid of her at this moment. She couldn't blame him. The transition from human to quasi-Time-Lord wasn't always obvious, but she remembered how much it had disturbed Keira. Her daughter hadn't been wrong when she'd accused her mother of becoming far more alien than her father had ever been.

There was a long silence between them and then Jack said, "You know the Doctor's regenerated again?"

She sat up. "Really? How many times?"

"Just once that I'm aware of. He's got a new set of companions, too, a husband and wife. It was one of the last things I saw before - " he cut himself off with a strangled noise and Rose realized he'd been about to say something about whatever had happened to cast him adrift in the universe, attempting to drink himself into oblivion.

"That's good. I'm glad he's not alone. He never..." she trailed off, uncertain what she'd been about to say.

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "It's...it's not good to be alone. Not when you've lived so long."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You were alone."

He looked away. "I needed it. And I deserved it. You don't know what I did, Rose."

She approached him where he lay in front of the console and knelt before him. "I know you, Jack. I know you wouldn't have done whatever it was unless it was necessary. Do you think I haven't done things that haunt me every time I close my eyes? It's what we are. What we do. What we have to do. What we will always do." She touched his face, brushing a fingertip over his closed eyelid. She could feel the intensity of the pain radiating off him.

"You think you know?" he finally managed to choke out. "I killed my own grandson, Rose. He was six years old and he died in pain and it was me who did it. I thought I wanted to die and I couldn't. And now you're here and I've realized I'm so selfish. I want to live, even if you could make me mortal again, I don't want it. I want to see the universe again, I want - " his voice trailed off as he erupted into harsh sobs and Rose pulled him into her arms, rocking him like a child. She let her fingers brush his temples. The hurt there was red and inflamed like an infected wound, resisting healing. She sent a tiny bit of influence into his mind, soothing the raw edges of his mental wounds and laying the foundation for his healing. She didn't know if he'd notice, but she thought it was the least she could do. After all, she was responsible for the pain he was in right now.

He pushed her away abruptly, a confused look on his face.

"Do you feel better?" she coaxed.

"Yeah, I do. You did something to my head, didn't you?"

Her face flushed and she cursed her ginger complexion. "I did. Are you mad?"

She had been afraid he would be angry, but instead a slow smile crossed his face. "Rose Tyler. I could never blame you for wanting to make people better."

She smiled back at him, then sat abruptly in the jump seat as a powerful event flared against her time sense. A sense of purpose was infusing her, a distinct feeling she'd only known since she regenerated the first time. Something was happening somewhere in the universe and she needed to be there. She looked at Jack and frowned. He couldn't come with her, whatever it was, not a walking fixed point. He would disturb any event he came across, make it centered around him by his very nature. She could never be cruel to him, not like the Doctor had been, but it was time for him to go.

She got up and walked around the console, flipping switches and setting coordinates. "So. Earth 2011, what do you think?"

He swallowed hard. "I think...I think it might be time."

She grinned widely at him. "Good! Cardiff, or somewhere more interesting?"

"I think I know just the place."


End file.
